Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Fellow blogger RumDood is hosting a contest to win a Mai Tai kit and to win you need to post about your favorite rum, rum cocktail, or your best rum experience.

I don't know if this will disqualify me, but I decided to write not-exactly-my-BEST-rum-experience. (In a way it was AWESOME).It's definitely my most unforgettable rum experience, though. Would that be good enough?

It was quite some time ago that we all went to RumDood's house for his first ever rum tasting event.It was the first time that we tried so many different types of rum, might've been the first I really sipped an aged rum, also.

It was a great experience, indeed, and his liquor collection filling his kitchen shelf and half of his dining room floor was mighty impressive.

The night I cut myself and got five stitches in the emergency room of an Orange County community hospital.How did it happen?

It started with a rum cocktail we were greeted with when we arrived. A daiquiri for me. Dark & Stormy and other rum drinks went around the room.

Then the tastin began. If you've been drinking Bacardi all this time, throw all your notion about rum away.

There was the award winning Ron Zacapa Centenario rum, a Guatemalan dark aged rum made with sugar cane juice so smooth and sweet it eased me into the rest of the night.

That includes the Pusser's British Navy Rum. Being the official rum of the British Navy (and distilled in wooden pot-stills), this should be closer to "the way rum was", "way back when" and since rum might have originated from my home country, Indonesia, and that this might be the closest thing to that, I tried to keep drinking although I found it harsh and "herbal."

Then there was the comparison of aged rum with Appleton's V/X (5/10), 12, and 21 year old rum. The 21 y.o. obviously the smoothest of all, but I liked the 12 better as it retained more flavor.

Sipping rum like we were sipping whiskey was to most of us then a new experience.

There were a couple more rums to be tasted, but in the end it was the absinthe that did me in. No, not drinking it. Opening it.Because all the aged rum in me gave me the brilliant idea of trying to break open the wax seal on the Obsello bottle with a kitchen knife, I ended up at Chapman Medical Center. At least it was a clean cut and I had barely missed my nerves.

It didn't really hurt until the doctor poured alcohol over it and stitched it up. I could've used some rum then.

On the positive side, Obsello felt so bad they sent me a bottle of absinthe!I had someone else open that for me.

Not the best rum experience, I suppose, but I dare you to beat my story.

Read DestinationEats' more sober account here. Luckily I had him and his gf to drive me home.